David Samson will not comply with a subpoena issued by New Jersey legislators investigating the Great Fort Lee Clusterfk. Meet the lawyer behind him.

This post is one of an ongoing series by Scott Raab, an Esquire writer at large and New Jersey resident who has covered the Port Authority for years. Read the entire series here.

The choicest bit of last week's Christie Countdown news came late Friday: David Samson, former Chairman of the Port Authority Board of Commissioners, will not comply with a subpoena issued by New Jersey legislators investigating the Great Fort Lee Clusterfk, citing his 5th Amendment protection against self-incrimination.

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"To be clear," thundered his lawyers' letter, "Mr. Samson has done nothing wrong and has violated no laws -- quite the opposite," and so he "can not and will not participate in a process that fundamentally jeopardizes his constitutional rights and stands to wrongly besmirch his reputation for honesty and public service."

The deliciousness goes beyond the "honesty and public service" punch line. Mr. Samson's lead lawyer is Michael Chertoff. You may recall Mr. Chertoff as George W. Bush's secretary of Homeland Security or as a federal appeals court judge or as an assistant U.S. Attorney General or as a federal prosecutor, but to me he'll always be co-founder of the Chertoff Group, a security-consulting outfit packed with former public servants just like Mike Chertoff, now peddling "the same kind of high-level, strategic thinking and diligent execution that have kept the American homeland and its people safe since 9/11."

That sort of strategic thinking and execution doesn't come cheap, of course. Back before the subpoenas -- not long after David Samson was newly installed by his old pal Chris Christie to chair the Port Authority's Board of Commissioners -- the Port Authority handed the Chertoff Group a $300,000 contract for a six-month study of the PA's security operation. By keeping the payoff below half a million, the Port could award the contract without bidding it, and somehow that same six-month deal turned into a year and more, and somehow that $300,000 ballooned into a sweet $1.5 million for the Chertoff Group.

It wasn't money for nothing. According to a former Port Authority official, the Chertoff Group review -- led by Rich Falkenrath, former NYPD Commissioner for Counterterrorism -- took its job seriously. Too seriously. Falkenrath wanted the PA to clean out its bloated, befuddled 1,500-member police department and to renegotiate an expired union contract that allowed PA cops to double and triple their base salaries with obscene amounts of overtime. The PA had already spent billions on security hardware and technology post-9/11 to harden the WTC site -- "(The Chertoff Group) couldn't find any more toys to buy," said the ex-official -- and besides, the agency had formally agreed in 2008 to give the NYPD overall and unprecedented jurisdiction over the 16 acres of Ground Zero.

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Under the circumstances, streamlining the Port Authority Police Department wasn't a tough call. It was obvious. It was crucial. And it was impossible. David Samson sat on the Chertoff Group report; it never was released. The union deal was never redone. Instead, the PAPD added another 1,000 officers, padding the union rolls further, and created an entirely new Security Department, which meant conducting a "national search" for the right person to fill the entirely new post of Chief Security Officer, who somehow turned out to be one Joe Dunne, a 32-year veteran of the NYPD.

No surprise then, just business as usual, when Chris Christie promised a roaring crowd of PAPD union members that "never -- not ever on my watch -- will there be any other police force who will patrol the new World Trade Center other than the Port Authority police," at an event unveiling the police union's endorsement of none other than Chris Christie for a second term as New Jersey's governor.

And no surprise that Samson hired Chertoff to defend his reputation against besmirchment, and his ass against any possible criminal charges relating to his public service during his tenure at the Port Authority. Just business as usual in Chris Christie's New Jersey.

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